April 5, 1999

Settling Into the New Neighborhood

This is Pete Athans, South Side Everest Base Camp, 17,500 feet (5,338 meters). The first full day in Base Camp [map] and we took care of a lot of different types of details: organizing the tech food tent, which is full of Snickers bars and junk foods that we’ll of course be very happy to consume in a variety of places.

We had a very pretty day. For about the first half of it, we were almost out in tee shirts, and then the snow kind of came in and obscured things. We saw some very brilliant ice-fall collapses from the crowd pleasers across the valley over at Pumori [mountain], and obviously over up on Nuptse [mountain], which is another very frequent runner.

So it feels good to be back here in Base Camp. Everyone’s excited about our puja, which will take place the day after tomorrow. One lama who will be coming up from Pangboche will give the final blessing to the team. Then we’ll be able to move under his good auspices up to Camp I and we’ll actually send a Sherpa team to Camp II. Certainly for me, it’s my 13th expedition here, things are moving right along and we’re obviously really pleased to close one chapter of getting us and all of our supplies half way around the world to this place. Now it’s up to us to really deal with the physical mountain and get to the business of climbing the thing. Thanks for spending some time with us.

—Pete Athans, Expedition Leader